EN BANC

G.R. No. L-5418 February 12, 1910

THE UNITED STATES, plaintiff-appellee,

vs.
CECILIO TAEDO, defendant-appellant.

O'Brien & De Witt, for appellant.

Office of the Solicitor-General Harvey, for appellee.

MORELAND, J.:

The defendant in this case was accused of the crime of murder committed, as alleged in the
information, as follows:

That on or about the 26th day of January of this year, the said accused, with the intention of
killing Feliciano Sanchez, invited him to hunt wild chickens, and, upon reaching the forest,
with premeditation shot him in the breast with a shotgun which destroyed the heart and killed
the said Sanchez, and afterwards, in order to hide the crime, buried the body of the
deceased in a well. The motive is unknown. The premeditation consists in that the accused
had prepared his plans to take the deceased to the forest, there to kill him, so that no one
could see it, and to bury him afterwards secretly in order that the crime should remain
unpunished.

The defendant was found guilty of homicide by the Court of First Instance of the Province of Tarlac
and sentenced to fourteen years eight months and one day of reclusion temporal, accessories,
indemnification and costs. The defendant appealed.

There is very little dispute about the facts in this case, in fact no dispute at all as to the important
facts. The accused was a landowner. On the morning of the 26th of January, 1909, he, with
Bernardino Tagampa, Casimiro Pascual, Valeriano Paulillo, and Juan Arellano, went to work on
a malecon or dam on his land. The defendant took with him a shotgun and a few shells, with the
intention to hunt wild chickens after he had set his laborers at work. He remained with his laborers
an hour or so and then went a short distance away across a stream to see how the alteration which
he had made in the malecon affected the flow of water from the rice filed on the other side of the
stream. He carried his shotgun with him across the stream. On the other side of the stream he met
the deceased, who, with his mother and uncle, had been living in a small shack for a month or so
during the rice-harvesting season. The accused asked the uncle of the deceased where he could
find a good place in which to hunt wild chickens. The uncle was lying on the floor in the interior of the
shack sick of fever. The deceased, a young man about 20 years of age, was working at something
under a manga tree a short distance from the shack. Although the accused directed his question to
the uncle inside of the shack, the deceased answered the question and pointed out in a general way
a portion of the forest near the edge of which stood the shack. There is some contradiction between
the testimony of the accused and the Government witnesses just at this point. The uncle of the
deceased testified that the boy and the accused invited each other mutually to hunt wild chickens
and that the accused accepted the invitation. The accused, however, testified that he did not invite
the deceased to go hunting with him, neither did the deceased go with him, but that he remained
under the manga tree "trying something." At any rate the accused went into the forest with his gun.
What took place there is unknown to anybody except the accused. Upon that subject he testified as
follows:
 And after Feliciano Sanchez pointed out that place to me, that place where the wild chickens
were to be found, I proceeded to hunt, because, in the first place, if I could kill some wild
chickens we would have something to eat on that day. So when I arrived at that place I saw
a wild chickens and I shot him. And after I shot that chicken I heard a human cry. I picked up
the chicken and went near the place where I heard the noise, and after I saw that I had
wounded a man I went back toward the malecon, where my companions were working,
running back, and when I arrived there I left my shotgun behind or by a tree not far from
where my companions were working; and I called Bernardino Tagampa to tell him about the
occurrence, and to him I told of that occurence because he is my friend and besides that he
was a relative of the deceased, and when Tagampa heard of this he and myself went
together to see the dead body.

Only one shot was heard that morning and a chicken was killed by gunshot wound. Chicken feathers
were found in considerable qualities at the point where the chicken was shot and where the accident
occurred. The defendant within a few minutes after the accident went out of the woods to
the malecon where he had left his laborers at work, carrying the dead chicken with him. The accused
called Bernardino Tagampa, on of the laborers, to go with him and they disappeared for some time.
Tagampa says that they went a little way toward the woods and came back. The accused says that
they went to the place where the body of the deceased lay and removed it to a place in the cogon
grass where it would not be easily observed. It is certain, however, that the body was concealed in
the cogon grass. During the afternoon Tagampa left the malecon, where his fellow laborers were
working, probably to hunt for a place in which to hide the body. The rest of the laborers saw the
witness Yumul take the chicken which had been killed by the accused. He delivered it to the wife of
the accused, who testified that she received the chicken from Yumul and that it had been killed by a
gunshot wound. That evening the accused and Tagampa went together to dispose of the body
finally. They took it from the cogon grass where it lay concealed and carried it about seventeen or
eighteen hundred meters from the place where it had originally fallen, and buried it in an old well,
covering it with straw and earth and burning straw on top of the well for the purpose of concealing it.
Tagampa said that he helped the accused dispose of the body because he was afraid of him,
although he admits that the accused in no way threatened or sought to compel him to do so. The
defendant prior to the trial denied all knowledge of the death of the deceased or the whereabouts of
the body. On the trial, however, he confessed his participation in the death of the deceased and told
the story substantially as above.

So far as can be ascertained from the evidence the prior relations between the accused and the
deceased had been normal. The deceased was a tenant on land belonging to a relative of the
accused. There was no enmity and no unpleasant relations between them. No attempt was made to
show any. There appears to have been no motive whatever for the commission of the crime. The
Government has not attempted to show any. The only possible reason that the accused could have
for killing the deceased would be found in the fact of a sudden quarrel between them during the
hunt. That idea is wholly negative by the fact that the chicken and the man were shot at the same
time, there having been only one shot fired.

Article 1 of the Penal Code says:

Crimes or misdemeanors are voluntary acts and omissions punished by law.

Acts and omissions punished by law are always presumed to be voluntary unless the
contrary shall appear.

Article 8, subdivision 8, reads as follows:

 He who, while performing a legal act with due care, causes some injury by mere accident
without liability or intention of causing it.

Section 57 of the Code of Criminal Procedure is as follows:

A defendant in a criminal action shall be presumed to be innocent until the contrary is

proved, and in case of a reasonable doubt that his guilt is satisfactorily shown he shall be
entitled to an acquittal.

The American doctrine is substantially the same. It is uniformly held that if life is taken by misfortune
or accident while in the performance of a lawful act executed with due care and without intention of
doing harm, there is no criminal liability. (Tidwell vs. State, 70 Ala., 33; State vs. Benham, 23 Ia.,
154, 92 Am. Dec., 417; Bertrong vs. State, 2 Tex. Ap., 160; Williamson vs. State, 2 Ohio C. C., 292;
U. S. vs. Meagher, 37 Fed. Rep., 875; U. S. vs. Castro, Fed. Cas., 14752; State vs. Legg, 3 L. R. A.,
N. S., 1152.)

In this case there is absolutely no evidence of negligence upon the part of the accused. Neither is
there any question that he was engaged in the commission of a lawful act when the accident
occurred. Neither is there any evidence of the intention of the accused to cause the death of the
deceased. The only thing in the case at all suspicious upon the part of the defendant are his
concealment and denial.

In the case of the State vs. Legg, above referred to, it is said (p.1165):

Where accidental killing is relied upon as a defense, the accused is not required to prove
such a defense by a preponderance of the evidence, because there is a denial of intentional
killing, and the burden is upon the State to show that it was intentional, and if, from a
consideration of all the evidence, both that for the State and the prisoner, there is a
reasonable doubt as to whether or not the killing was accidental or intentional, the jury
should acquit. . . . But where accidental killing is relied upon, the prisoner admits the killing
but denies that it was intentional. Therefore, the State must show that it was intentional, and
it is clearly error to instruct the jury that the defendant must show that it was an accident by a
preponderance of the testimony, and instruction B in the Cross case was properly held to be
erroneous.

In 3 L. R. A., N. S., page 1163, it is said:

Evidence of misadventure gives rise to an important issue in a prosecution for homicide,

which must be submitted to the jury. And since a plea of misadventure is a denial of criminal
intent (or its equivalent) which constitutes an essential element in criminal homicide, to
warrant a conviction it must be negative by the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt.

In support of such contention the author cites a number of cases.

We are of the opinion that the evidence is insufficient to support the judgment of conviction.

The judgment of conviction is, therefore, reversed, the defendant acquitted, and his discharge from
custody ordered, costs de oficio. So ordered.

Arellano, C.J., Torres, Mapa and Johnson, JJ., concur.

Separate Opinions

CARSON, J., concurring:

I concur.

I am in entire agreement with the conclusions of the majority in this case. I think it proper to estate,
nevertheless, that the doctrine laid down in the somewhat loosely worded West Virginia case of
State vs. Legg, cited in the majority opinion, and in the citation from 3 L. R. A., N. S., can not be said
to be in conformity with the general doctrine in this jurisdiction, as laid down in the decisions of this
court, without considerable modification and restriction limiting its scope to cases wherein it is
properly applicable.